You have seen how we can create and manage screens and how to configure what fields to add to the screens. The next piece of the puzzle is letting Jira know how to choose the screen that has to be displayed for each issue operation.

Screens are displayed during issue operations, and a screen scheme defines the mapping between screens and the operations. With a screen scheme, you can control which issue operations the screen displays, as follows:

• Create Issue: This screen is shown when you create a new issue
• Edit Issue: This screen is shown when you edit an existing issue
• View Issue: This screen is shown when you view an issue

Just like screens, whenever you create a new project in Jira, a new screen scheme is created specifically for your project, and screens are automatically assigned to these issue operations.

The defaults created are usually good enough to get started with; however, there will be times when you don't want certain fields to be available for editing once the issue is created, such as Issue Type. You may want to have finer control over the type of issues raised for reporting and statistical measurement reasons, so it is not a good idea to let users freely change the issue type. Another example would be when certain fields are not required during creation because the required information may not be available at the time. Therefore, instead of confusing and/or overwhelming your users, leave those fields out during issue creation and only ask for them to be filled in at a later time when the information becomes available.

As you can see, by dividing the screen into multiple issue operations rather than having the one-screen-fits-all approach, Jira provides you with a new level of flexibility to control and design your screens. As always, if there are no significant differences between the screens, for example, create and edit, it is recommended that you create a base screen and use the Copy Screen feature to reduce your workload.

Just like screens, you need to be a Jira administrator to manage screen schemes. Perform the following steps to manage screen schemes:

1. Browse to the Jira administration console.
2. Select the Issues tab and then the Screen schemes option to bring up the View Screen Schemes page:

From the View Screen Schemes page, you will be able to see a list of all the existing screen schemes, create and manage their configurations, and view their associations with issue type screen schemes (this will be explained in a later section).